Jodistrict

Begin by stop calling it “failure”. Mistakes are crucial for learning. Depending on what you are doing, you may even want to accelerate your “failures” to get the information needed to actually make something work.

For self love, I recommend "Love, Freedom, and Aloneness" by Osho.

Biden won because he is boring. After Trump, that became appealing to many people. He ran a good campaign by being calm and not saying anything controversial or provocative. He didn't take Trump's bait and lash out.

For me, it took about 5 minutes to have the God experience. It was the very first psychedelic I had ever taken and I had no idea what I was getting into. But the healer who determined the dosage was highly experienced and guided me on what to do. I’m glad that I did it with an experienced guide.

How are they any different than us, since we are all one? What they do, we do. In a sense, they are the scapegoats of a dysfunctional world and carrying an unfair burden. The Western myth of the individual keeps us from seeing this.

In the morning, at the end of your regular shower, turn the faucet to the coldest temperature, and wash in cold water for one minute. I actually put a timer on the floor, because one minute can be a long time. This gives me a lot of energy in the morning. I also wash my face with cold water.

This is a great thread Commodent. Thank you. Mackler does an excellent job of exposing the pathologies of the mental health industry. If you are thinking of going to a therapist you should listen to the below video. It’s a shame, but not a surprise, that a man with this knowledge and sensitivity chooses not to participate any further in a disfunctional system that further traumatizes people instead of helping them.

I attended a zoom talk the other day featuring Shinzen Young. He has been involved with several studies, including at Yale, investigating meditation with neuroscience. This is particularly exciting because Shinzen understands the enlightenment process and all the stages and believes science and technology can be used to assist the process. In the talk, he was mentioning possible “boosters” to meditation, such as yoga. He actually mentioned microdosing psychedelics to boost meditation but didn’t go into detail. Could it be possible that the present science based on the materialistic paradigm could be adequate to come up with a reliable method for attaining enlightenment? https://www.shinzen.org/

This is why I don’t take anything serious that is popular in this shallow, money-driven culture. Peterson reflects back the prejudices of his followers thus making them feel validated. He is not an author who breaks new ground in understanding.

I believe this is a result of social media. The main stream media no longer controls the source of news, and hence the source of reality making. Anyone now can create news and put it on YouTube, adding to the noise and confusion. Worse yet, there are tons of scam artists and psychopaths who are more than willing to take advantage of the new technology. Also, the main stream media itself is corrupted by money and power and is no longer accurate. I still remember the live speech broadcast with Colin Powell explaining in front of the UN with charts and photographs the “evidence” showing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. How is this any different than the allegations of election fraud propagated without evidence?

I had a facilitator tell me that occasionally he gets a person who will have no reaction (that’s zero) to ayahuasca even after being given 3 or 4 cups. He stops after that. If you view aya as just a “drug”, it is hard to explain that. It is a medicine, a plant teacher, a spirit.

I have been told by a shaman that the plant medicines give you exactly what you need and what you deserve. It’s not a drug like aspirin where an effect happens automatically independent of your intentions. That is part of what the strict diet is about. To learn to sacrifice and make yourself worthy. This doesn’t make sense if you are in the “drug” paradigm.

Follow your intuition and not your mind. For me, it is Mexico.

I recommend reading Shinzen Young’s recent book to get a valuable insight into this subject. Shinzen’s life goal is to integrate meditation with Western science. He makes a distinction between “objective science” and “subjective science”, and he sees the Buddha as a subjective scientist. Shinzen also believes in the possibility of using technology as part of a scientific method for achieving enlightenment. https://www.amazon.com/Science-Enlightenment-How-Meditation-Works-ebook/dp/B01KUGQYJO/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=shinzen+young&qid=1605638117&sr=8-1

I was told by my shaman, that the real work begins after the ceremony ends. The ayahuasca is still working for 2 to 3 months after the ceremony. It opens up your emotions. During your journey, you may have been downloaded information that serves as your homework, i.e. things you need to do or changes that you need to make. Try to look for this and integrate the experience into your life.

He repeats the same familiar uninformed opinions, confuses psychedelics with alcohol (intoxication), creates straw man arguments, and seems totally ignorant of the scientific evidence that psychedelics are safe, non addicting, and have therapeutic uses. I don’t see any enlightened opinion here, but nice turban. Terence Mckenna is so much more informative and insightful in his talks and comes from a place of deep knowledge of the subject he talks about.

The problem is that we don’t have 100 years to develop because the orange stage is unsustainable, and the increase of power through technology is exponential, so spiritual progress also has to be exponential. The next Trump in the future may be a fly.

I agree with that. Finding the real deal anywhere is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It is too easy to mimic the words and behavior. But any true path has to lead to love. Where does the love come in - Shinzen Young.

The Dalai Lama frequently talks about love and compassion. “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” --- Dalai Lama True love is born from understanding. -- Buddha

I am not going to criticize them on who they vote for. That is their business. I just don’t think that they are enlightened teachers or even close. Finding the real deal is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The state of the unconscious mind can determine one’s ability to meditate. Consider Bill who had an ideal childhood with understanding parents and little trauma. John had a traumatic childhood. Bill can meditate, but John can’t focus because his mind is permanently distracted. In the East, they address this issue with the concept of “karma”. So, the Buddha could attain enlightenment because he worked on himself through countless lifetimes, and thus his mind was ready for the final push. If you are a bad mediator, you have to work on your karma. Now, if John does intense psychotherapy to resolve his issues and now can meditate, does that invalidate his meditation? I think the answer here is clearly not. Now if John resolves his issues with psychedelic assisted therapy, does that invalidate his mediation? Why would it? This seems more likely an attitude generated by an orange culture where you construct the myth of the “individual” and pretend you do everything yourself and take pride in your illusory effort. It can help to shift out of this culture. Because if you are a fish swimming in muddy water, some of the mud sticks to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghBxjliqIPY

Also keep in mind that most Americans have been propagandized by the corrupt "War on Drugs". That combined with the American myth of the “individual”. In Mexico, there is an acceptance of these medicines, knowledgeable practitioners connected with the indigenous culture, and a respect for alternate methods of healing. That’s why I only work with psychedelics in Mexico.

Meditation is difficult and not everyone can do it. In the East, only monks tend to meditate, and everyone else just does merit, in the hopes of becoming a monk in the next life. Also, before they would even be allowed to meditate they would need to practice morality for several years to calm the mind. It was westerners who believed and insisted they can instantly meditate. Osho noticed westerners had a hard time relaxing the mind due to growing up in a Christian culture, so he developed dynamic meditation. If your mind keeps spinning you can’t get anywhere. I have been meditating for over 20 years, but I never experienced the state of Samadhi I had with 5-meo-DMT. The voice had totally stopped and there was complete silence. One reason to take psychedelics is for purification – to go into the shadow world and purge trauma from the body. It’s the trauma that keeps the mind spinning. Ayahausca is useful for purging.

One thing that bothers me about Sadhguru is that he seems to be positioning himself as the “Answer Man”. He is willing to come up with an answer to virtually anything no matter how mundane or distant from his real expertise. When I took the Inner Engineering Course, you were given a certain number of tokens to look at his videos giving various answers, and if you ran out, you would have to pay for more answers. I thought a guru was someone who guides you towards liberation. Answers are just brain food that makes the mind more confused. In Zen, they give you a koan to trip up the answer seeking mind. Maybe he is appealing to the millions of lost people living in the rootless and soulless West desperately seeking answers. Has anyone in his organization obtained liberation?

The hard sciences have intentionally chosen their reality tunnel in order to avoid wasting time on false and unfruitful paths. Science is a group project that includes the judgments of wise men spanning generations. For example, over the course of centuries, scientists decided that teleology was not a valid scientific explanation. So you couldn’t explain a natural process as having goals. You had to use efficient causality. Another example, is with the advent of thermodynamics, perpetual motion machines were not considered valid explanations. The methodology was not only productive, but they succeeded in blowing up their own tunnel with quantum mechanics, making a new paradigm possible.